Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone Project / Abstract Suburbs have long been a place near and dear to the hearts of many, they provide private property, large homes and a sense of security. They have traditionally been located far from city centers and also far from jobs. The following paper researchers whether or not suburban homes can be updated to compensate for the extra distance their inhabitants have to commute to work. The study looks at three case houses in the focus area of Continental Ranch, a Pulte suburb. The follow research was performed using a cost benefit analysis on three case homes and four case vehicles. The results were calculated using available data, estimates and website based calculators. The five upgrades calculated were CFL/LED light bulb replacement, water fixture upgrades, fridge replacement, rainwater harvesting and installation of solar panels. The case homes varied in size from 1,369 to 3,609 square feet and were built between 1989 and 2001. The homes have between two to five bedrooms and two to three bathrooms. The cars chosen as vehicle options for comparison were the Toyota Prius, the Honda Civic, the Honda Odyssey and the Chevrolet Tahoe, all 2016 models. The results found that all three homes could be upgraded to compensate for the annual cost of gas consumption of all four car options. It should be noted that these calculations did not take into account the cost of the upgrades, but rather the savings it would procure.

Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone Project / There has been a nationwide movement which has promoted urban agriculture. The locale, seasonality, and methods of cultivation, have all entered the spotlight of public consciousness. While farmer’s markets, and co-ops may sometimes have limited accessibility with respect to cost another community gardens are branch of the urban agriculture movement which are highly accessible. The surge in popularity of community gardens came with the 2008 market crash, which created many foreclosures, and accordingly vacant lots. Where vacant lots are reclaimed by citizens, they create a sense of ownership within a community, they become physical manifestations of neighborhood rally cries, elbows rub, and community connections are made. With a relatively small amount of initial input, and continued care, there are tangible outputs, and literal fruits of labor. The popularity of these gardens extends to schools, and a whole branch of pedagogy which emphasizes place based learning. The benefits to these schools is tremendous; students are offered the opportunity to be academically engaged in a space other than the traditional classroom. Community gardens show the potential to create value from little input. With the benefit of a structured design process, there is potential to make school gardens learning space, in addition to growing space. The intent of this study is to explore the value created for these spaces by a formalized design process.

Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone Project / Apartment communities in the arid southwest in Tucson and Tempe, Arizona and Sand Diego, California within three miles of U of A, ASU, and SDSU with over 500 residents were evaluated based on the sustainability features they provided. An ANOVA test of significance was used to determine a correlation between the number of sustainability features provided and the occupancy rate of the community.

This dissertation investigates overall the impacts of the modern extractive mining industry on the lives of local people in the region of Kedougou, and in particular in the villages of Sabodala and Faloumbo. It explores also, how the utilitarian narratives about corporate mining impacts shape both the understanding of the scope of mining- and of corporate-community relationships. Sabodala is one of the many communities all over the world that lack significance in the global economy simply because they are geographically isolated and were abruptly introduced to modern corporate mining. This dissertation investigates the impacts of modern extractive industry on the lives of rural communities in eastern Senegal. It investigates also how utilitarian discourses by the Senegalese state and corporations contradict the reality of corporate social (ir) responsibility in the mining region. Using the lenses of political economy, political ecology and livelihood sustainability, I investigate how governance plays out in the process of implementing corporate social responsibility as a vehicle for local community development. This case study has also shed the light on the fact that the state has neglected ethical issue. Doing an anthropology of place in Sabodala helped me to understand how this place is "wired" into the global market of gold and how this new "order" creates "disorders" at the local level. For example and interestingly, the realignment of power relations in the community was responsible for tensions, conflicts and de-structuring social cohesion and traditional stratification, as some members of the community have seen their economic status changed overnight while others were deprived. In reality, the expected grand benefits haven't "trickled down" to the wider society, and to paraphrase Ferguson, industrial mining in Senegal is not "socially thick". Meanwhile, as the pace of gold mining increases in Sabodala so too, do its rapacious demands on local natural resources (land, water, flora, and fauna), which simultaneously affect local livelihoods system.

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Traditional manufacturing industry have developed a linear production path that involves resource extraction, energy usage, emissions released to air and water, and waste produced at volumes and rates that places increasing burden on the natural environment. These traditional manufacturing organizations have mostly viewed environmental activities separately from their core business operations. Today, organizations are shifting their manufacturing approach. There is a significant potential to reduce the energy use, emissions released, resource consumption and wastes produced through sustainable initiatives. Using environmental key performance indicators (KPIs) is one emerging sustainability initiative. Environmental KPIs depict the vast quantity of environmental data of a firm in a comprehensive and concise manner, applying mostly to set absolute material and energy data in relation to other variables in order to increase the informational value of quantitative data. In this thesis work, literature review and empirical study was carried out to find out the significant factors and the major challenges during the development and implementation of environmental key performance indicators (KPIs). A case study in four Swedish manufacturing companies was carried out to collect primary data which was later compared with literature review. The thesis work also highlights the management system used to implement environmental KPIs.

Gambling availability has increased as well as the number of people gambling. Within gambling, addiction has become a growing problem, affecting both the gambling business as well as the individuals. This situation forces companies to balance their profit with responsible action in order to prevent gambling addiction. This thesis examines why and how gambling companies differ in their methods to help players avoid addiction in order to establish a sustainable society. A multiple case-study has been carried out, where three gambling companies have been examined and analyzed. The companies are Svenska Spel, Norsk Tipping and Unibet. The survey is based on interviews with representatives from the companies working in the departments of Responsible gambling or CSR. The conclusions of this study show that gambling companies can profit both economically and establish good will, if they show responsibility. Gambling companies differ in how they handle addiction, mainly because of diffuse concepts as CSR and Responsible Gambling. If gambling companies cooperate actively between themselves as well as with research of addiction, a balanced, sustainable society may be reached. Discussions of solving the problem of gambling addiction can preferably continue in order to reach a sustainable society.

There is a need to reduce the emissions of the country as a whole, to limit the risk of climate change due to Global warming and to meet targets set by the Kyoto agreement and the Climate Change Act. The large number of houses constructed annually in England and Wales have an important role to play in this. By reducing emissions, resulting from both the manufacture of construction materials and the energy used by house occupants, housing can help achieve the necessary emissions reductions. Alternative construction methods can contribute to this, either by having a lower embodied energy or by demonstrating good thermal properties to limit heat loss and hence operational energy. However, it is essential that both the construction industry and the public accept the alternative construction methods for them to be economically viable. In addition, there should be no loss of performance as a result of using alternative construction methods. Six methods of construction were studied in depth, including generating embodied and operational energy requirements and identifying their performance in terms of airtightness, wall thickness, and fire resistance. Public and industry acceptability were examined by use of questionnaires. A comparison of the data collected showed that identifying the best, or optimal, option visually is a challenging task as no single method of construction is best in all areas. A methodology was created to aid the selection of a wall construction method. The methodology is capable of examining multiple variables, in this work it is demonstrated with construction method and front building dimension. To identify the optimal method, optimisation by genetic algorithms is used. Use of the methodology was demonstrated with a case study based on the most frequently constructed housing type for England and Wales. The importance of weighting was demonstrated with the use of weightings based on concerns held by different parties. It was found that minimising the external wall area gives the optimal solution as less material is needed and there is less opportunity for heat loss. For the situation examined in the case study, Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) were identified as having the potential to reduce the environmental impact of housing construction in England and Wales without impacting saleability or performance.

Land contamination by petroleum hydrocarbons is a widespread and global environmental pollution issue from recovery and refining of crude oil and the ubiquitous use of hydrocarbons in industrial processes and applications. Sustainable treatment of hydrocarbon-contaminated industrial land was considered with reference to seven published works on contaminated railway land including the track ballast, crude oil wastes and contaminated refinery soils. A methodology was developed to assess the level hydrocarbon contamination of track ballast (Anderson et al., 2000) and in Anderson et al. (2002, 2003) solvent and surfactant cleaning of ballast was investigated and potential environmental impacts of the processes examined. Optimisation of ex situ bioremediation of diesel-contaminated soil (Cunningham & Philp, 2000) demonstrated the efficacy of the addition of microorganisms (bioaugmentation) to enhance diesel biodegradation rates at field pilot scale. This work motivated a further study that examined a novel aeration approach incorporating ventilator turbines (cowls) for soil biopiles (Li et al., 2004). An optimised ex situ bioremediation for crude oil wastes was developed in Kuyukina et al. (2003) which demonstrated the efficacy of bioaugmentation and the application of biosurfactants. The final study investigated the potential application of biosurfactants to in situ remediation (Kuyukina et al., 2005) in laboratory soil columns contaminated with crude oil. The collected works are informative to those seeking to remediate hydrocarbon-contaminated industrial land and the sustainability of the approaches was considered.

The aim of this study was to explore consumers’ descriptions of sustainable food consumption. The concept of sustainability can be difficult to grasp, but is often defined in terms of three pillars; environment, society and economy. Prior research of sustainable food consumption have often focused on one of the pillars rather than all of them together in relation to consumers understandings of sustainable food consumption. Notwithstanding, previous research have mentioned that in order to fully comprehend sustainability it is essential to take all of the three pillars into consideration. Therefore, this study acknowledged this gap, as it focused on the three pillars of sustainability as a base, and further connected the three pillars to the four food concepts; organic, Fairtrade, sustainable diets and waste, in order to fully understand consumers descriptions of sustainable food consumption. The study was conducted using a qualitative approach, and the data was collected through semi-structured interviews with a sample of students and employees at Linnaeus University in Sweden. The interviewees gave varied and interesting answers, which later were analyzed in comparison to the theory on the subject. With the answers from the interviews it was concluded that environmental and social sustainability were prioritized to economic sustainability among participants. As the participants’ descriptions of sustainable food consumption was varied, and all of the four concepts in relation to three pillars were analyzed, a framework was developed in order to clarify how the consumers describe sustainable food consumption. The study also presents a number of implications for further research as well as managerial implications.  Keywords Sustainable food consumption, consumers description, three pillars of sustainability, economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, social sustainability, organic, Fairtrade, sustainable diets, vegetarian, locally produced, waste reduction, food waste